This invention relates to substitutes for wooden beams employed in the construction industry, principally in the building of homes, offices, and other places where people live and work.
Walls in buildings are usually made by erecting a framework of a plurality of spaced vertical wooden beams called "studs" joined together into a unit by an upper horizontal wooden beam and a lower horizontal wooden beam (called "plates"). Sheets of wall board are then applied to both sides of the framework to produce finished wall surfaces that may be painted, papered, or the like as desired. It has been recognized that metal beams rather than wooden beams are suitable, and often preferred, e.g., to eliminate the possibility of termite damage. In more recent times, as the cost of wooden beams has increased and the availability of wooden beams has decreased, it has become clear that there is a need for an improved and less costly beam.
Some beams, e.g., those supporting a wall, need not be load-bearing beams, and it is principally these beams to which this invention applies. It is an object of this invention to provide a novel metal-wood beam useful as a wall stud. It is another object of this invention to provide a novel use for short lengths of wooden beams, i.e., those lengths that are frequently discarded as waste. Still other objects will appear from the more detailed description which follows.